falling forward, back into orbit <READ IT /PROPER GANDER

you may or may not already know, but i participated in the mdbb event, and was teamed with the wonderful writer @elevenvolcanoes and amazing beta reader @memryse! you can check out ro's awesome fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41524974

go on, i know you wanna read it, dont be shy

as promised, ill be uploading some wips of this below the cut because oh man. this took forever

4 months of collaborative work! i am thrilled to have participated in this event and to have worked with amazing people to make these works :D

the great llama heist by @mcyt-hc-writing

recall by @redwinterroses

Impulse and Jimmy laughed groaningly, lightening the atmosphere in the room just a little.

“Ohh, good one!” Impulse praised Martyn.

Taurtis looked back and forth between the three other men, frowning lightly.

“Oh right, of course…!” Noticing Taurtis’s confusion, Martyn passed him the telescope.

Taurtis took it slowly, unsure what to do with it.

“It’s a spyglass,” Martyn explained eagerly. “Now, look at me through it and say ‘aha’!”

Hesitantly, Taurtis lifted the glass to his eye and pointed it at Martyn; it zoomed in unflatteringly close on the man’s face, and Taurtis couldn’t help the smile that started to pull at his mouth because of how stupid he looked. “Aha…?”

The other three cheered loudly, startling him a little, and Taurtis grinned wider, pointing the spyglass at Jimmy, and then at Impulse. ”Aha! Aha!”

“You’ve got it, you’ve got it!” Martyn laughed, at the same time as Jimmy elatedly yelled, “He said the thing!”

It wasn’t really that funny, but the pure joy that it brought to the three Southlanders was contagious, and then Taurtis was laughing too.

Here was my piece for the MDBB! I was in team h3 with amazing author @catgirl-lizzie , epic beta @nonbinary-enderman, and my awesome fellow artist @eggbloom! make sure to read the fic here (https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/41433753) and leave a nice comment!

“High school?” Mumbo sounded surprised. “You went to high school?”

“Yeah, it was, um…” Grian bit his lip and blinked hard, a slight frown of discomfort creasing his brow as he turned his head away from Mumbo. He drew in a shaky breath. “It was a real shit time, I’ll tell you that. It was a really fucked-up place.” He shivered a little as the memories started to push against the mental door he had kept them locked behind for so long, but he quickly pushed them back down; he couldn’t afford for that lock to give now, especially in the middle of a death game. “But yeah,” he continued, speaking just a bit too loudly to put on a convincing front that everything was ok. “Taurtis and I used to hang out together all the time. We played loads of games and stuff like that. Do you remember the build swap game you and I played a couple of times?”

“Yeah, I do.” Mumbo offered him a small smile.

“That was one of the games I played with Taurtis all the time. We literally played so many rounds and so many different rulesets…” A grin started pulling at the corners of Grian’s mouth as he reminisced on the fond memories. “We also played drawing games, and Who’s Your Daddy-”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mumbo interrupted, smirking.

Grian stopped, then laughed. “I promise it’s not as, um… sustainable as it sounds. It’s… I mean, it’s a death minigame, basically: one player tries to kill themself, and the other tries to stop them, like a parent trying to take care of a really rambunctious baby.”

“Sounds like a whale of a time.”

“Yeah.” Grian smiled a tiny bit, but there was no warmth in it. “Death games can be fun when they’re much lower stakes, and in a world where you won’t be forced to keep the scars from them.”